Mma Ramotswe could not help but note that the floor was dirty. That was Daffodil, of course; no self-respecting Motswana lady would let her kitchen floor get into such a state. She knew nothing of Daffodil’s background, other than that she came from somewhere down near Lobatse. Perhaps that was it; perhaps people in Lobatse were a little bit slacker about these things. Or perhaps it was just because she was the product of a slack home where the mother was not particularly good: good mothers taught their daughters to keep a kitchen clean, and really good mothers tried to teach their sons that too these days, because it was not fair that women should have to do all the domestic work and it was about time the men took on their share. Perhaps that would change; perhaps Africa would begin to see just how unfair it was that half humanity should do most of the work about a house. Perhaps men would stop their posturing and talking and expecting women to cook all their meals and…Or perhaps not. Look at Charlie. Only the other day he had said how much he was looking forward to getting married one day and having a woman to do all those things for him. And when Mma Makutsi had exploded and taken him to task for saying that, he had been genuinely surprised. So perhaps talk of change was premature.

Susan stood in the middle of the kitchen. She was staring out of the window at the back of the room, out into the yard.

“The kitchens in these houses are all very much the same,” Vain said. “The Commission used the same design up and down the country, but it was a good one, I think. A place for a fridge; a place for the stove; three store cupboards; a place for a table.” He paused, and glanced at Mma Ramotswe. He too had seen the direction of Susan’s gaze.

“Do you remember the garden at the back, Mma?” he asked. “There was a washing line there, right outside the window, but my wife moved it to the side of the house because there was some grass there and if the washing fell onto the grass it got less dirty.”

Susan, who had been largely silent, now spoke. “There was a servant’s block there, wasn’t there? One of those small houses?”

Vain nodded. It was a standard arrangement, and still was: at the back of a house of that size there would be a small building—two rooms and a bathroom—that made up the servant’s quarters. That was where the maid or the man who worked in the garden might live, depending on the domestic arrangements of the particular household. And having a servant was not a sign of wealth or privilege—even a modest establishment would have a maid, as this was an important way of providing employment that would otherwise not exist.